


A Year in Motion: Unmoving in May

by Miss_Mil



Series: A Year In Motion [5]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s08e18 Threads, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 11:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10718871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Mil/pseuds/Miss_Mil
Summary: Sometimes, despite everything they'd been through, Carter still wondered if they could really do this. If it ever could just be them, without their ranks or their responsibilities.





	A Year in Motion: Unmoving in May

* * *

 

**A Year in Motion: Unmoving in May**

* * *

 

She stands in the kitchen - a place she rarely is these days – and stares at the coffee machine on the countertop.

For some ungodly reason, the small stainless steel device has decided this morning that it would refuse to work.

And, now on this early Saturday morning, she is suddenly deprived of coffee.

Briefly, she ponders the idea of rigging naquadah into it. Then she’ll always have coffee, and the damned thing will have no more excuses to die.

But, the idea seems superfluous when she considers she is never really home. The sheer amount of dust and dirt built up around the place attests to that particular fact.

She should probably clean it today.

But, her lab in the underground complex hidden away in Nevada has _so_ much more appeal than even she realized when she first took up the posting. That is why she is never home.

It keeps her from her thoughts. And, thinking too much about _them_.

From wondering what will happen, and what will be next. From dreaming of a world where she isn’t a military astrophysicist and he isn’t a damaged, former blacks-ops-Colonel-turned-desk-jockey General because he grew tired of killing.

And, tired of waiting.

Sam’s feet are bare, padding lightly on the floorboards of a house that has never felt like her own. It’s still early, and the stifling heat of the summer has yet to hit them.

She can’t sleep, but that’s no surprise.

She thinks she should be tired, because she has no coffee and it’s far too early for even the birds to be chirping in the trees.

Her thoughts have been going around in her head, pulling her from the rest she so desperately needs. His final word to her email has been burned into her mind, and when she closes her eyes, that’s all she sees.

_Always._

She’s been torturing herself the last few weeks, events going over and over in her scattered mind trying to piece together where it all started to go so wrong.

Where their transition from colleagues to friends to something more should have been easy, familiar and simple.

Instead, it’s fraught with emotional complications only heightened by the distance between them and the damn chain-of-command they can’t seem to extract themselves from.

Maybe, they know each other too well.

And, that’s the problem.

She hasn’t seen him since he walked out of her hotel room, and she’d long since lost the courage to call him, or even email him after the one-worded reply she’d received to her flirtatious, and not-so-subtle message.

Suddenly, she longs for the days of SG-1. The days where she could see him and know immediately what he was thinking just by the expression on his face.

She realises she is still staring at the coffee machine, an empty mug hanging loosely in her hand.

A noise outside breaks her from her thoughts, and she knows it’s too early for it to be the neighbours and their young children. She hears the noise far too clearly over the ticking of her clock for it to be anything but another person.

She’s determined to ignore it, and content to stand rooted in her dusty kitchen with a coffee machine that refuses to work despite her best mechanical knowledge.

But, it gets the better of her and she heads toward her front door anyway.

Bits of hair fall forward into her eyes, and she wraps her arms over her chest, yanking the door open with more force than strictly necessary.

He is taller than she remembers, standing on her porch with dark shades covering his eyes.

The mug slips from her grasp, and shatters around her bare feet.

‘Carter.’

The soft lit of her name from his lips makes her heart thud painfully in her chest. He barely flinches as the sound of breaking porcelain ricochets through the morning peace.

She wants to ask what he is doing here, at oh-six-hundred on a Saturday morning, standing on her porch in Nevada like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Like it wasn’t anything but expected.

And demand in all hell why the last time they’d been this close, she’d been needing him desperately and he’s gently explained why they couldn’t do this.

The early morning light is feathering touches on her scarcely maintained garden; the warmth of May emanating through in rays of sunlight broaching her house with the dawn. The sky behind him in the distance is dark, clouds threatening to rumble over and spill down on them.

It’s going to rain later.

Suddenly, she’s angry about her mug. Irrationally so.

Her mouth opens, and closes. The anger is there inside her, threatening to spill over but she can’t let herself lose control that way.

So desperately, she wants to put all her frustration into a single use of his title.

_Sir._

_General._

_Jack._

She isn’t sure what to call him, or how to address his casual use of her name, so she stares at him. Her eyebrows raise in silent question.

In this moment, her response will define exactly what they are.

His hands flick on the side of the light bag she hadn’t realised he was carrying.

She muses lightly to herself that it could be a sign that they are getting too deep into something that they just can’t control.

They’ve waited for so long.

She knows she doesn’t want that control anymore.

And, she’s tired of waiting for him to make that choice for her.

Because, she knows he never will.

His dark eyes are warm, and she thinks she can get used to seeing him look at her this way. Without the burden of command.

Her frustration is ebbing.

He steps toward her, the sound of cracking porcelain under his boots hard to hide.

Swallowing thickly, she meets his eyes and invites him in. 

* * *

The rain clouds eventually roll in, splattering big fat drops against her window that she is so sure has dust leaching from every pore. Suddenly, the dust bothers her.

The wind has picked up slightly, but lacks the ferociousness she thought was coming.

Her mind flicks back and she is caught in a whirlwind of memories and emotion. She can still feel the way his fingers dug into her hip as they barely made it in the door, and her back was up against the wall, his thigh pushing its way between her legs before she’d even had a chance to say hello.

Or, a chance to yell.

She isn’t sure what she feels anymore; only that she woke up needing him at one point during the last eight years and never really stopped.

They’ve been lying there, together, staring at spots on her wall, her ceiling or her window.

Anything, if only to avoid looking at each other and addressing what they have just done.

It doesn’t feel as wrong as she thought it would.

After the weeks apart, after the way he kissed her against _that_ tree back in a rainy April, she was so sure that this was how it was meant to be between them.

A lifetime of waiting. Of wanting.

It’s many hours later before Jack finally speaks, and she finds it so surprising that he is the one to break the silence.

‘I never thought this would happen,’ he mutters, running a finger over the crisp sheets of her rarely-used bed.

‘Really?’ Sam asks, her voice soft.

In truth, she wasn’t so sure either at one point. The urge to tell him that all he had to do was say the word, and she’d follow him anywhere was overwhelming.

That, at some point in their final years of SG-1, she’d suddenly stopped caring so much about her career.

And that when Pete had come along, and presented her with the opportunity for a normal life, she hadn’t been able to say no.

She’d wanted so desperately in those moments to hear Jack say the words that would save her from a terrible choice.

He doesn’t answer her question for a while; the ticking of the clock in the hallway is the only thing filling the silence. The rain on the window starts to lighten.

It seems so impossible only a few months ago, when their journey with the Goa’uld was ending, that they’d ever end up here. Together.

And, yet here they are.

His hands are trailing around, tracing endless patterns of things in his mind she cannot see.

It’s fascinating her, the way his mind works.

It’s ironic that they always end up near each other when it’s raining.

In the eight years she has known him; his hands were never idle. Even ow, his fingers skim the ends of her hair. His expression is unreadable, and she knows even if she asked what was on his mind, he would never tell.

‘Do you know what I think,’ Jack asks, breaking the silence.

His voice is soft and breathy on her face.

Sam hesitates. She isn’t sure she really wants to know what he thinks.

‘Mmm?’

Curiosity gets the better of her.

‘You should let your hair grow a bit.’

So _that_ was on his mind. Her hair. For all the emotional turmoil inside of her, sometimes she forgets that he can be so… simple.

She smothers a smile, keeping her voice as level as possible. ‘Any particular reason why?’

Jack rolls over onto his back, sighing. The crisp air-force issue sheets crackle under his weight and she thinks to herself she probably should have bought her own linen by now.

It’s a long moment before he speaks again.

‘It feels a bit too much like I am sleeping with the Major.’

His words are light, but the inference is there. There is _too much_ Air Force in this room. Even when they try to hide it.

Sam sits up, blue eyes sparkling with what she hopes is humour. She does not expect that to come out of his mouth.

His words are startling honest, and she thinks to herself that even after all this time, she has never really known the man underneath the uniform.

Maybe, she never will.  

‘Really?’ this time she can’t quite hide the emotion. ‘I thought you wanted to sleep with the Major?’

She tries to inject a little more humour into the air, taking a leaf from his playbook and covering her own intense feelings she doesn’t quite know how to manage.

‘Captain and Colonel, yes. But not the Major,’ he sits up as he speaks, swinging his legs off the bed and walking to his long-discarded pants.

His sudden departure surprises her, as does the serious undertones in his own statement. The muscles in his back are tense, and she can see the way he moves stiffly with pain.

It’s a stark reminder that they are no longer the young officers that they had once been.

She wonders if he has done this before; bedded someone under his command. Maybe Jack and Sam waited too long.

The question hovers on her tongue, but she really doesn’t need to ask it. She knows the answers.

Just as she knows why the Colonel wanted to forget the Major. Too many things happened in the years she held that rank; the Zata’rcs, the mine, Jack and Teal’c going far too deep into space.

She doesn’t even venture into the Nirrti realm, or the many times one of them ended up stranded without the other.

And, if she is really honest, the years she held that rank highlighted all the reasons why they couldn’t be just Jack and Sam. Why relationships between officers were _never_ a good idea.

Suddenly, she isn’t sure they can even do _this_ now.

There were too many times when they nearly lost each other. He doesn’t need to tell her that the thought of Major Carter never brings up anything good. If she’s honest, the thought of the Major never really holds well for her either.

But, everyone wanted Captain Carter. She smiles to herself at the memory. A young, blonde Air Force Captain that had a chip on her shoulder the size of a small planet. Oh boy, what she wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall for the conversations in the men’s locker room at _that_ time.

Suddenly, she longs to be that Captain again. When everything was simple and she was able to look at Jack O’Neill with nothing more than the eyes of someone under his command.

And, by the time she made Colonel, she was well and truly off limits to everyone. She may as well have had a fluorescent sign plastered to her forehead that said “Property of J O’Neill”.

She smiles a little at the thought.

‘Hungry?’

His voice startles her, and the sudden change of subject confuses Sam for a minute. She focuses her eyes on him intently, piecing together what he just said amongst her scrambled thoughts.

‘Sure,’ she mummers, hoping it is the right answer when he continues to stare.

He turns on his heel and exits the room without a backwards glance. Somehow, the light-hearted early morning conversation she’d tried to have had failed dismally.

But, she’s never been good at ‘after’.

Pete flashes briefly before her eyes, in another room, in another house, in another town. He’d left silently too.

Only this time, the sight of Jack disappearing didn’t feel quite so _wrong_.

Sam sighs, and climbs out of bed. She searches briefly for her clothing, but settles instead for her favourite jeans and comfortable jumper before heading out into the kitchen where the smell of coffee is calling.

She can’t help but wonder how he managed to fix her god-damn coffee machine.

* * *

They’re not good at talking. They never have been.

Jack honestly believes it should be their life mantra.

It’s been hours since his rude departure from the bedroom, and neither of them have broached the subject since.

Carter has been quiet, keeping to herself with her nose buried in a book at the end of the sofa.

Jack finds himself content to just watch her. He’s not even sure if he should ask her what she is reading with such intense fascination.

He probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.

It suddenly strikes him as a little odd that this is the first time they have been in a domestic setting together; free of regulations and other team members. She seems almost content, to spend a Saturday afternoon reading as the world ticks by.

In all his domestic fantasies, he has never once imagined Carter sitting doing _nothing._

And, it’s not as awkward as he imagined it to be.

Somehow, it’s comforting.

A small part of him knows that had the world been a little kinder, Sara would be sitting opposite him right now.

But he also knows Sara would have never let it be; never let him treat her like that, disappearing from the bedroom and not call him out on it. She would be demanding, and want to know _exactly_ what it was that bothered him.

Sara hadn’t had the years of military training.

She had never really understood what it meant to be a soldier, and she’d never been able to accept that sometimes there were things he just couldn’t say.

He appreciates Carter a little bit more in that moment. She understands his need for silence; understands his need to bury himself with his own thoughts.

They both keep their own counsel.

He’s seen her do the same; bury herself in the past and shut everybody out.

He misses the way she glances up from the book sharply, feeling his eyes on her.

‘Something wrong?’ she asks. 

Her inflection sounds odd to his ears. He’d never thought he’d miss the way she started and ended a sentence with his moniker.

_Sir._

_Colonel._

_General._

Over the years, it had somehow come to define them.

Staring at her, his mouth opens slowly. ‘No.’

She watches him for a moment more before dropping her gaze back to the book in her hand. He wonders if she is actually reading the words, or just feigning to be busy until he was ready to talk.

He isn’t sure he will ever be able to voice what is on his mind.

Her eyes flick over the words on her page, before resting on him slightly.

‘Come here,’ he says. Two simple words that have defined their relationship ever since Daniel was lost in the murky waters of a planet they visited long ago.

A small smile graces her features, and he watches with interest as she unfolds herself from the couch. Her steps are light and graceful as she moves toward him.

Pausing, she surveys him through shining eyes. She steps forward cautiously, and he opens his arms to her.

He hopes that he can reassure her with this simple gesture. He knows she won’t pressure him, and she will wait for him to voice his concerns in his own time.

He thinks he loves her just a little bit more in those short moments.

‘I do have one question though,’ she says, eyeing him seriously.

‘Mm?’ he asks, trailing his hand up her side, counting the ribs with his fingertips.

‘How did you fix my damned coffee machine?’

He watches her seriously for a moment, before leaning in to brush his lips against hers.

‘That Carter,’ he whispers against her skin. ‘Is a secret.’

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: I realise it has been over a year since I have updated this. I apologise immensely; real life just got in the way. (As it is, I am *supposed* to be writing a 3k word law essay due in *ahem* 12 hours). Hopefully you are all still with me on this. Rest assured, it will be finished!


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